by Ouida
“Je le crois,” said Falkenstein, briefly, as he took up the autobiography, and began to talk on it.
“I don’t like Goethe for one thing,” said Valérie; “he loved a dozen women one after the other. That I would pardon him; most men do so; but I don’t believe he really loved any one of them.”
“Oh yes he did; quite enough, at least, to please himself. He wasn’t so silly as to go in for a never-ending, heart-burning, heart-breaking, absorbing passion. We don’t do those things.”
“Go in for it!” repeated Valérie, contemptuously, “I suppose if he had been of the nature to feel such, he couldn’t have helped it.”
“I can help going near the fire, can’t I, if I don’t wish to be burnt?”
“Yes; but a coal may fly out of the fire, and set you in flames, when you are sitting far away from it.”
“Then I ought to wear asbestos,” said Waldemar, with a merry quizzical smile. “You authors, and poets, and artists think ‘the world well lost, and all for love!’ but we rational people, who know the world, find it quite the contrary. Those are very pretty ideas for your proverbs, but they don’t suit real life. We, when we’re boys, worship some parterre divinity, till we see her some luckless day inebriate with eau-de-Cologne, or more unpoetic porter, are cured and disenchanted, wait ten years with Christines and Minna Herzliebs in the interim, and wind up with a rich widow, who keeps us straight and heads our table. You, fresh from the school-room, fasten on some lachrymose curate, or flirting dragoon, as the object of your early romances, walk with him under the limes, work him a smoking-cap, and write him tender little notes, till mamma whispers her hope that Mr. A. or B. is serious, and you, balancing, like a sensible girl, A. or B.’s tangible settlements with the others’ intangible love-speeches, forsake the limes, forswear the notes, and announce yourself as ‘sold.’ That’s the love of our day, Miss L’Estrange, and very wise and — —”
“Love!” cried Valérie, with supreme scorn. “You don’t know the common A B C of love. You might as well call gilt leather-work pure gold.”
Falkenstein laughed heartily. “Well, there’s a good deal more leather-work than gold about in the world, isn’t there?”
“A good deal more, granted; but there is some gold to be found, I should hope.”
“Not without alloy; it can’t be worked, you know.”
“It can’t be worked for the base purposes of earth; but it may be found still undefiled before men’s touch has soiled it. So I believe in some hearts, undefiled by the breath of conventionality and cant, may lie the true love of the poets, ‘lasting, and knowing not change.’”
“Ah! you’re too ideal for me,” cried Waldemar, smiling at her impetuous earnestness. “You are all enthusiasm, imagination, effervescence — —”
“I am not,” she answered, impatiently. “I can be very practical when I like; I made myself the loveliest wreath yesterday; quite as pretty as Bella buys at Mitchell’s for five times the sum mine cost me. That was very realistic, wasn’t it?”
“No. That exercised your fancy. You wouldn’t do — what do you call it? — plain work, with half the gusto; now, would you?”
Valérie made a moue mutine, expressive of entire repudiation of such employment.
“I thought so,” laughed Falkenstein. “You idealists are like the fire in the grate yonder; you flame up very hot and bright for a moment, but ‘the sparks fly upward and expire,’ and if they’re not fed with some fresh fuel they soon die out into lifeless cinders.”
“On the contrary,” said Valérie, quickly, “we are like wood fires, and burn red down to the last ash.”
“Mr. Falkenstein, come and look at this little ‘Ghirlandaio,’” said Bella, turning round, with an angry light in her eyes; “it is such a gem. Papa bought it the other day.”
Waldemar rose reluctantly enough to inspect the “Ghirlandaio,” manufactured in a back slum, and smoked into proper antiquity to pigeon, under the attractive title of an “Old Master,” the brewer and his species, and found Miss Cashranger’s ignorant dilettantism very tame after Valérie’s animated arguments and gesticulation. But he was too old a hand at such game not to know how to take advantage of even an enemy’s back-handed stroke, and he turned the discussion on art to an inspection of Valérie’s portfolio, over whose croquis and pastels, and water-colors, he lingered as long as he could, till the clock reminded him that it was time to walk on into Eaton Square, where he was going to dine at his father’s. The governor excepted, Falkenstein had little rapport with his family. His brother was as chilly disagreeable in private life as he was popularly considered irreproachable in public, and as pragmatical and uncharitable as your immaculate individuals ordinarily are. His sisters were cold, conventional women, as utterly incapable of appreciating him as of allowing the odor of his Latakia in their drawing-room, and so it chanced that Waldemar, a favorite in every other house he entered, received but a chill welcome at home. A prophet has no honor in his own country, and the hearth where a man’s own kin are seated is too often the one to nurture the cockatrice’s eggs of ill-nature and injustice against him. Thank Heaven there are others where the fire burns brighter, and the smiles are fonder for him. It were hard for some of us if we were dependent on the mercies of our “own family.”
The old Count gave him this night but a distant welcome, for Maximilian was there to “damn” his brother with “faint praise,” and had been pouring into his father’s ear tales of “poor Waldemar’s losses at play.” All that Falkenstein said, his sisters took up, contradicted, and jarred upon, till he, fairly out of patience, lapsed into silence, only broken by a sarcasm deftly flung at Maximillian to floor him completely in his orthodoxy or ethics. He was glad to bid the governor good night; and leaving them to hold a congress over his skepticism, radicalism, and other dangerous opinions, he walked through the streets, and swore slightly, with his pipe between his teeth, as he opened his own door.
“Since my father prefers Max to me, let him have him,” thought Waldemar, smoking, and undressing himself. “If people choose to dictate to me or misjudge me, let them go; and if they have not penetration enough to judge what I am, I shall not take the trouble to show them.”
But, nevertheless, as he thus resolved, Falkenstein smoked hard and fast, for he was fond of the old Count, and felt keenly his desertion; for, steel himself as he might, egotist as he might call himself, Waldemar was quick in his susceptibilities and tenacious in his attachments.
Since Falkenstein had got intimate with Valérie L’Estrange in one ball you are pretty sure that week after week did not lessen their friendship. He was amused, and past memories of women he had wooed, and won, and left, certain passages in his life where such had reproached him, not always deservedly, never presented themselves to check him in his new pursuit. It is pleasant to a naturalist to study a butterfly pinned to the wall; the rememberance that the butterfly may die of the sport does not occur to him, or, at least, never troubles him.
So Falkenstein called to Lowndes Square, and lent her books, and gave her a little Skye of his, and met her occasionally by accident on purpose in Kensington Gardens, where Valérie, according to Mrs. Cashranger’s request, sometimes took one of her cousins, a headstrong young demon of six or seven, for an early walk, to which early walks Valérie made no objection, preferring them to the drawing-rooms of No. 133, and liking them, you may guess, none the less after seeing somebody she knew standing by the pond throwing in sticks for his retriever, and Falkenstein had sat down with her under the bushes by the water, and talked of all the things in heaven and earth; while Julius Adolphus ran about and gobbled at the China geese, and wetted his silk stockings unreproved. He made no love to her, not a bit; he talked of it theoretically, but never practically. But he liked to talk to her, to argue with her, to see her demonstrative pleasure in his society, to watch her coming through the trees, and find the longs yeux bleus gleam and darken at his approach. All this amused him, pleased him as something origina
l and out of the beaten track. She told him all she thought and felt; she pleased him, and beguiled him from his darker thoughts, and she began to reconcile him to human nature, which, with Faria, he had learnt to class into “les tigres et les crocodiles à deux pieds.”
It was well he had this amusement, for it was his only one. He was going to the bad, as we say; debts and entanglements imperceptibly gathered round him, held him tight, and only in Valérie’s lively society (lively, for when with him she was as happy as a bird) could exercise his dark spirit.
You remember the vow he made when the Silver Chimes rang in the New Year? So did not he. We cannot be always Medes and Persians, madam, to resist every temptation and keep unbroken every law, though you, sitting in your cushioned chair, in unattacked tranquillity, can tell us easily enough we should be. One night, when he was dining with Bevan, Tom produced those two little ivory fiends, whose rattle is in the ear of watchful deans and proctors as the singing of the rattlesnake, and whose witchery is more wily and irresistible than the witchery of woman. No beaux yeux, whether of the cassette or of one’s first love, ever subjugate a man so completely as the fascinations of play. Once yielded to the charm, the Circe that clasps us will not let us go. Falkenstein, though in much he had the strong will of his race, had no power to resist the beguilements of his Omphale; he played again and again, and five times out of seven lost.
“Well, Falkenstein,” cried Godolphin, after five games of écarté at a pony a side, three of which Falkenstein had lost, “I heard Max lamenting to old Straitlace in the lobby, the other night, that you were going to the devil, only the irreproachable member phrased it in more delicate periods.”
“Quite true,” said Falkenstein, with a short laugh, “if for devil you substitute Queen’s Bench.”
“Well, we’re en route together, old fellow,” interrupted Tom Bevan; “and, with all your sins, you’re a fat lot better than that brother of yours, who, I believe, don’t know Latakia from Maryland. Jesse Egerton told me the other day that his wife has an awful life of it; but who’d credit it of a man who patronises Exeter Hall, and gave the shoeblacks only yesterday such unlimited supply of weak tea, buns, and strong texts?”
“Who indeed! Max is such a moral man,” sneered Falkenstein; “though he has done one or two things in his life that I wouldn’t have stooped to do. But you may sin as much as you like as long as you sin under the rose. John Bull takes his vices as a ten pound voter takes a bribe; he stretches his hand out eagerly enough, but he turns his eyes away and looks innocent, and is the first to point at his neighbor and cry out against moral corruption. Melville’s quite right that there is an eleventh commandment— ‘Thou shalt not be found out’ — whose transgression is the only one society visits with impunity.”
“True enough,” laughed Jimmy Fitzroy. “Thank Heaven, nobody can accuse us of studying the law and the prophets overmuch. By the way, old fellow, who’s that stunning little girl you were walking with by the Serpentine yesterday morning, when I was waiting for the Metcalfe, who promised to meet me at twelve, and never came till half-past one — the most unpunctual woman going. Any new game? She’s a governess, ain’t she? She’d some sort of brat with her; but she’s deuced good style, anyhow.”
“That’s little L’Estrange,” laughed Godolphin: “the beloved Bella’s cousin. He’s met her there every day for the last three months. I don’t know how much further the affair may have gone, or if — —”
“My dear Harry, your imagination is running away with you,” said Falkenstein, impatiently. “I never made an appointment with her in my life; she’s not the same style as Mrs. Metcalfe.”
Oh the jesuitism of the most candid men on occasion! He never made an appointment with her, because it was utterly unnecessary, he knowing perfectly that he should find her feeding the ducks with Julius Adolphus any morning he chose to look for her.
“All friendship is it, then?” laughed Godolphin. “Stick to it, my boy, if you can. Take care what you do, though, for to carry her off to Duke Street would give Max such a handle as he would not let go in a hurry; And to marry (though that of course, will never enter your wildest dreams) with anybody of the Cashranger’s race, were it the heiress instead of the companion, would be such a come-down to the princely house, as would infallibly strike you out of Count Ferdinand’s will.”
Waldemar threw back his head like a thorough-bred impatient of the punishing. “The ‘princely house,’ as you call it, is not so extraordinarily stainless; but leave Valérie alone, she and I have nothing to do with other, and never shall have. I have enough on my hands, in all conscience, without plunging into another love affair.”
“I did hear,” continued Godolphin, “that Forester proposed to her, but I don’t suppose it’s true; he’d scarcely be such a fool.”
Falkenstein looked up quickly, but did not speak.
“I think it is true,” said Bevan; “and, moreover, I fancy she refused him, for he used to cry her up to the skies, and now he’s always snapping and sneering at her, which is beastly ungenerous, but after the manner of many fellows.”
“One would think you were an old woman, Tom, believing all the tales you hear,” said Godolphin. “She’d better know you disclaim her, Falkenstein, that she mayn’t waste her chances waiting for you.”
Waldemar cast a quick, annoyed, contemptuous glance upon him. “You are wonderfully careful over her interests,” he said, sharply, “but I never heard that having her on your lips, Harry, ever did a woman much good. Pass me that whisky, Conrad, will you?”
The next morning, however, though he “disclaimed” her, Waldemar, about ten, took his stick, whistled his dog, and walked down to Kensington Gardens. Under the beeches just budding their first leaves, he saw what he expected to see — Valérie L’Estrange. She turned — even at that distance he thought he saw the longs yeux bleus flash and sparkle — dropped the biscuits she was giving the ducks to the tender mercies of Julius Adolphus, and came to meet him. Spit, the little Skye he had given her, welcoming him noisily.
“Spit is as pleased to see you as I am,” said Valérie, laughing. “We have both been wondering whether you would come this morning. I am so glad you have, for I have been reading your ‘Pollnitz Memoirs,’ and want to talk to you about them. You know I can talk to no one as I can to you.”
“You do me much honor,” said Falkenstein, rather formally. He was wondering in his mind whether she had refused Forester or not.
“What a cold, distant speech! It is very unkind of you to answer me so. What is the matter with you, Count Waldemar?”
She always called him by the title he had dropped in English society; she had a fervent reverence for his historic antécédens; and besides, as she told him one day, “she liked to call him something no one else did.”
“Matter with me? Nothing at all, I assure you,” he answered, still distantly.
“You are not like yourself, at all events,” persisted Valérie. “You should be kind to me. I have so few who are.”
The tone touched him; he smiled, but did not speak, as he sat down by her poking up the turf with his stick.
“Count Waldemar,” said Valérie, suddenly, brushing Spit’s hair off his bright little eyes, “do tell me; hasn’t something vexed you?”
“Nothing new,” answered Falkenstein, with a short laugh. “The same entanglements and annoyances that have been netting their toils round me for many years — that is all. I am young enough, as time counts, yet I give you my word I have as little hope in my future, and I know as well what my life will be as if I were fourscore.”
“Hush, don’t say so,” said Valérie, with a gesture of pain. “You are so worthy of happiness; your nature was made to be happy; and if you are not, fate has misused you cruelly.”
“Fate? there is no such thing. I have been a fool, and my folly is now working itself out. I have made my own life, and I have nobody but myself to thank for it.”
“I don’t know that. Circumstances, t
emptation, education, opportunity, association, often take the place of the Parcæ, and gild or cut the threads of our destiny.”
“No. I don’t accept that doctrine,” said Falkenstein, always much sterner judge to himself than anybody would have been to him. “What I have done has been with my eyes open. I have known the price I should pay for my pleasures, but I never paused to count it. I never stopped for any obstacle, and for what I desired, I would, like the men in the old legends, have sold myself to the devil. Now, of course, I am hampered with ten thousand embarrassments. You are young; you are a woman; you cannot understand the reckless madness which will drink the wine to-day, though one’s life paid for it to-morrow. Screened from opportunity, fenced in by education, position, and society, you cannot know how impossible it is to a man, whose very energies and strength become his tempters, to put a check upon himself in the vortex of pleasure round him — —”
“Yes,” interrupted Valérie, “I can. Feeling for you, I can sympathise in all things with you. Had I been a man, I should have done as you have done, drunk the ambrosia without heeding its cost. Go on — I love to hear you speak of yourself; and I know your real nature, Count Waldemar, into whatever errors or hasty acts repented of in cooler moments the hot spirit of your race may have led you.”
Falkenstein was pleased, despite himself, half amused, half saddened. He turned it off with a laugh. “By Heaven, I wish they had made a brewer of me — I might now be as rich and free from care as your uncle.”
“You a brewer!” cried Valérie. Her father, a poor gentleman, had left her his aristocratic leanings. “What an absurd idea! All the old Falkensteins would come out of their crypts, and chanceries, and cloisters, to see the coronet surmounting the beer vats!”
He smiled at her vehemence. “The coronet! I had better have full pockets than empty titles.”
“For shame!” cried Valérie. “Yes, bark at him, Spit dear; he is telling stories. You do not mean it; you know you are proud of your glorious name. Who would not rather be a Falkenstein on a hundred a year, than a Cashranger on a thousand?”